UNDERGRADUATE LAW JOURNAL OF FAU SPRING 2021 I EDITION X RICO: THE ANTI-MAFIA LAW ROBERT MARRIAGA School of International & Public Affairs Florida International University SAYD HUSSAIN College of Engineering & Computer Science Florida Atlantic University LEANET GUTIERREZ College of Arts & Letters Florida Atlantic University Abstract After years of sending mob leaders to jail for reasons that may not have been the ones authorities wanted to charge them with, in 1970, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was implemented on a federal level. The RICO law was designed to go after mob bosses that were not able to be charged with murder or as intellectual authors of a murder because they were not the ones executing the plan. This law also allowed prosecutors to go after mobsters for crimes such as drug trafficking, extortion, labor racketeering, and other crimes that would usually be under the control of the mafia. In this article, the RICO law will be analyzed. This article will determine whether the RICO law has been a success and if it has fulfilled its purpose after its implementation. 8 UNDERGRADUATE LAW JOURNAL OF FAU SPRING 2021 I EDITION X After years of sending mob leaders to jail for reasons that may not have been the ones authorities wanted to charge them with, in 1970, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was implemented on a federal level. 1 The RICO law was designed to go after mob bosses that were not able to be charged with murder or as intellectual authors of a murder because they were not the ones executing the plan. This law also allowed prosecutors to go after mobsters for crimes such as drug trafficking, extortion, labor racketeering, and other crimes that would usually be under the control of the mafia. In this article, the RICO law will be analyzed in order to determine whether the RICO law has been a success and whether or not it has fulfilled its purpose after its implementation. Organized crime has been a problem in the United States for more than a century. If we trace back in history, gangs seemed to gain power in the late 1890s and early 1900s on the East Coast and the Midwest. Most of these gangs started in Europe. Many of them were Irish, Russian, Dutch, and most famously, Italian. The most powerful of these mobs were the Italians. Many Italian immigrants were from Calabria, Naples, and Sicily. When they established themselves in the United States they began as local gangs that committed extortions, robberies and ran illicit businesses such as gambling and prostitution. These mobs actually became very rich during the 1920s Prohibition Era, when they saw an opportunity to get into the liquor trade which allowed them to create profit like never before. 2 One of the problems that occurred was that gangs, especially the Italians in New York, were always engaged in an internal war over turf control. The biggest war was the Castellammare War between Salvatore Maranzano and 1 William R. Geary, The Creation ofRico, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000, 329- 367. 2 Origins of the Mafia, History, May 28,2019, https://www.history.com/topics/crime/origins-of-the-mafia, (last visited March 31 , 2021.) 9 UNDERGRADUATE LAW JOURNAL OF FAU SPRING 2021 I EDITION X Joe Masseria. 3 This war ended with a bloody battle where both Maranzano and Masseria were killed. At the end of this battle, a man by the name of Charles "Lucky" Luciano established a commission, which meant there were going to be five families controlling New York City instead of a boss of bosses.4 Luciano, who was mentored for years by the famous gangster/gambler Arnold Rothstein, who fixed the 1919 World Series, learned that the mafia needed to move from being street gangs to business enterprises if they wanted to be legitimate and unnoticeable in front of authorities' eyes. 5 The previous examples during the Castellammare War and Al Capone's flashy way of handling things put organized crime in the spotlight and made them easy targets for the police to chase. 6 With the new family systems made by Lucky Luciano, one of the families would control a territory or one of the boroughs in New York City. These family administrations would be organized using the concept of a ranking authority. 7 In order to be part of the family, you needed to be a Made Man and swear allegiance to the Omerta code which meant that they were part of La Cosa Nostra and would never give up any other family member or give information of this secret organization. 8 3 David Critchley Buster, Maranzano and the Castellammare War 1930-1931, U.S. Department of Justice https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/buster­ maranzano-and-castellammare-war-1930-1931, (last visited March 31 , 2021.) 4 How is a Mafia Family Structured, National Crime Syndicate, https://www.nationalcrimesyndicate.com/mafia-family-structured/, (last visited March 31 ' 2021.) 5 Daniel A. Nathan Arnold Rothstein rigged the 1919 World Series. Or did he?, Legal Affairs, https://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/March-April- 2004/review _nathan_ marapr04.msp, (last visited April 5, 2021.) 6 The Mob Museum, Lucky Luciano, https://themobmuseum.org/notable _ names/lucky-luciano/, (last visited April 5, 2021.) 7 Id. 8 Adriana Nicole Cerami, The Mafia's system of silence in communication, film and literature: perversions ofsociety and transgressions ofomerta , https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/dissertations/kd17ct10k, (last visited AprilS, 2021.) 10 UNDERGRADUATE LAW JOURNAL OF FAU SPRING 2021 I EDITION X The National Crime Syndicate website described the structure in this way: • The family would be organized as follows; on top would be the Crime Boss/Don, the Boss would have a counselor or advisor called the Consigliere. Under the Boss would be the Underboss and below the Underboss would be the Caporegimes. The lowest rank of Made men mobsters would be the soldiers. Families would also have associates but they were not part of the family, they just worked for them. With this system, it would be difficult to trace the family and it would make it even harder for the Don, who was the boss, to be charged with anything because they were not the one committing the crime directly.9 With the prohibition era over in the mid-1930s, the mafia moved into another business that would be the pillar of their future wealth post-prohibition, and this would be the heroin trade. The heroine trade would be established between La Cosa Nostra in the United States and European mobs such as the Sicilian Mafia and the Corsicans in France. With negotiations between Lucky Luciano and Joseph Bonanno and the Europeans, they would receive heroin 10 into New York City through the port in Marseille, France . The heroine would be imported from Turkey and the Sicilians and Corsicans would then send it overseas. This would be known as the French Connection. La Cosa Nostra would become very rich with this network and had a lot of influence in local politics and over law enforcementY Yet with high crimes such as drug trafficking and murders, mob leaders were not able to be prosecuted. 9 How is a Mafia Family Structured, National Crime Syndicate, https:/ /www .nationalcrimesyndicate. com/mafia-family-structured/, (last visited March 31 ' 2021.) 10 Intelligence Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 1999, A Tangled Web: A History of CIA Complicity in Drug International Traffickinghttps://fas.org/irp/congress/1998_cr /980507-l.htm, (last visited April 5, 2021.) 11 James 0. Finckenauer, La Cosa Nostra In The United States, https://www.ojp.gov/pdffilesl/nij/218555.pdf, (last visited AprilS, 2021.) 11 UNDERGRADUATE LAW JOURNAL OF FAU SPRING 2021 I EDITION X Mobsters like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, the two most powerful mobsters went to jail, Capone for tax evasion and Luciano for Prostitution. 12 Other mobsters were able to get away with many other crimes and didn't even spend time in prison. The war against the mob was being lost, drugs were flooding the streets of the United States and many murders were left unsolved because the people that ordered the murders were not the ones being sent to jail. In the 1960s, the five families of New York, the Bonnano, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese were gaining power over unions, construction projects, legal gambling and were infiltrating the legitimate business world. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy made it a priority to go after the mob. 13 He went after union leaders involved with the mafia-like Jimmy Hoffa and opened cases against many mobsters. This was when the first mobster, Joe Valachi from the Genovese family opened the can of worms that revealed the secret of the underworld mob. 14 He exposed whose murders were committed, who gave the orders to commit the murders, and who was authorized to commit the murders. The continuing drug consumption in the United States forced politicians and law enforcement to work together to bring down the mafia. President Nixon, in the beginning of his presidency in the late 1960s, declared war against drugs and with the help of Congress designed the law that would bring mob leaders to court. In 1970, President Nixon signed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act into law. 15 12 William Donati, Lucky Luciano: The Rise and Fall of a Mob Boss , McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, 2010, (last visited March 31 , 2021.) 13 William R. Geary, The Creation ofRico (K1uwer Academic Publishers, 2000), 329- 367, date, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1008359922135 , (last visited April 5, 2021.) 14 Id.